


This Exquisite Absence

by Catchclaw



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Love Letters, M/M, Mutual Pining, Season/Series 03, Separation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 19:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8634691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Hannibal receives an unexpected package.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/9c/1f/89/9c1f898e0d8a1be3766c4d10708802ee.jpg).

It comes in the mail one Thursday, a day that’s stretched thin by summer sun, or so the afternoon orderly reports.

The package has been opened, of course, but there’s still a thrill in the act of unsealing. Especially once Hannibal recognizes the handwriting.

The return address--a post office box in Boston--is unfamiliar. The squashed shape of the ‘a's is not.

He draws the book out slow, slow slow, savoring. His fingertips where Will’s were. The smell of dust and old paper. Of Will.

 _Eating People_ , the book’s title tells him, _Is Wrong._

It makes him smile: a real one that tastes of unforgotten familiarities, that takes the shape of Will’s mouth against his.

He shakes the package, to be certain, but no. There’s no note.

Hannibal sets the envelope aside and balances the book on his palm. Its weight is inconsequential; its message, however, is not.

 _I miss you_ , this book says.

He turns the pages carefully and still a few crumble, reduced to yellowed ash by the gentle sweep of his fingers. There are faded inked notes in the margins here and there, a few rude streaks of pink highlighter. Some unfortunate underlining. And, ah--on the very last page, huddled against the flyleaf, an inscription in Will’s hand:

_I think of you when I don’t want to. I hear your voice when all I crave is quiet. I feel the ghosts of your hands and I want to be haunted._

Hannibal wraps himself in the words, Will’s, rose-colored barbed wire that sets him—sets them—apart from this place, from the banalities of incarceration. This, he thinks, this exquisite absence is that which makes your presence inevitable, Will.

He sets the book on the corner of the table, just so, and reaches for a pencil. An unblemished sheet. For some other way of saying _I love you_.

It's more difficult than he thought.

 _Will,_ he writes at last. _My dear Will:_

_Sometimes I wake up in the middle of night—an arbitrary distinction, here; a place where time is theoretical, distinctions in the hours made without a difference, but nonetheless—and I am certain, for a long beautiful breath, that you are beside me. That all I need do is stretch out a hand and I will find your body, your back, the place between your shoulders that was made for my mouth to rest in._

_And it feels so very real, not dreamlike at all, but a firmer reality than any I have seen since we parted, than I have felt in these months—years—of our separation._

_I reach out in the middle of the night, Will, and what I find is concrete. Cold and solid and very much not you._

_You know where I am, though, and in this I find comfort. As I did in your gift, however cheeky its title. Wherever did you find it? I like to think it was in London, or Oxford; both hold used bookshops in which I’m certain you would happily lose many hours. And after, having found you, I would take you to a café where you’d show me what you’d found, volumes of value only to you, expounding upon the virtues of this text or that as your coffee got cold._

_I would buy you another cup and listen, gladly._

_You’d hold my hand in the high street on the way back to Claridge’s. Kiss me in the lift, your new old books pressed between us. In our room, cluttered with the pleasant  detritus of our lives, you'd urge me into bed then slip away, back to your books which you'd insist on positioning atop the nightstand by size, lining the spines up precisely and then knocking them over and starting again, perverse, a transparent attempt to frustrate me that would have every desired effect._

_Will._

_In your note, you spoke of ghosts. There are those who believe that spirits can be tied to objects. Have you heard such stories? I imagine you have. So closely bound are these owners to their possessions—through grief or violence, great joy or jealousy or love—that in death, they stake a claim, give up part of their soul to hold on to a part of the life they once knew._

_Some part of me is yours in this way. I think you know this. Or should I say, some part of you remains tangled in me. It is not hyperbole to say that I am bound to you, haunted by you every day, every hour I am conscious here in this Purgatory of my own design. You are the corona that obliterates the hard edges of these walls, that blinds me just enough so that I might ignore the windows full of prying eyes. I see your shadow, always, darling, more sharply than my own._

_But sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I know that you are not here. I cannot escape it. I far prefer the delusion._

_Thank you for the book._

He consigns the paper to thirds and third again and slips it inside of Will’s book. Slides Will’s book back into its package. With a felt-tip flourish, he strikes “Return to Sender” over his address; draws a neat black circle to highlight Will’s own.

“A misguided aficionado,” he tells the evening orderly, tucking the package into the slot. “These things happen sometimes, I’m afraid.”

Later, when the lights begin to dim, he returns to it, the act of writing: unfolds the letter in his mind and tastes the pleasant weight of each word included, the hush of each one left out. His words in Will’s hands, his phrases curled inside of Will’s mouth. They keep the middle of the night at bay, these flicker-sweet imaginings. For a little while, anyway.


End file.
